305 American Anthropologist • Vol

305 American Anthropologist • Vol. 107, No. 2 • June 2005

Culture and Public Action: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on Development Policy. Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, eds. Stanford: Stanford University Press,

2004. 414 pp.

ANTHONY BEBBINGTON

University of Manchester

In a context in which, some claim, economics is colonizing the social sciences, a book on culture edited by two economists will set off alarm bells. That these are World Bank economists will merely ratchet up the volume. Yet this book is well worth the read. It is one product—probably the most significant—of a set of Dutch-funded initiatives at the World Bank to explore the relationships between culture and development. The book brings together interventions from senior anthropologists (Arjun Appadurai, Mary Douglas, and Lourdes Arizpe), senior economists (Amartya Sen and Jean-Philippe Platteau), sociologists, social development practitioners and bank staff—each exploring, in their own way, how concepts of culture ought to influence understandings of inequality, exclusion, politics, policy, and institutions.

Although inevitably uneven, the contributions are thought provoking both in general and on their specific themes (e.g., HIV/AIDS, political culture, participation, and indigenous movements). Although the authors have differing conceptualizations of both culture and development, most—perhaps all—share some basic convictions about the ways in which an engagement with “culture” should change understandings, and practices, of development. The editors suggest that two such convictions stand out. First, the traditional focus of development (economics) on individuals—their preferences, assets, and choices—should give way to a recognition of the ways in which “relational and group-based phenomena shape and influence individual aspiration, capabilities and the distribution of power” (p. 359). Second, it is imperative to create space for debate across culturally diverse perspectives on development, and that in such debates the issue of power must be faced head on: The scope for “subordinate” groups to engage and have voice must be enhanced.

Appadurai’s chapter captures these concerns with particular clarity. Drawing on his work with Slum/Shackdwellers International in India, he argues that strengthening the capability of the poor to have voice is critical if they are to renegotiate the “norms that frame their social lives” (p. 66). Central to any such endeavor is the cultivation of poor people’s “capacity to aspire,” to imagine and lay out paths toward futures they view as better. This relates to culture in many ways, not least because “culture is a dialogue between aspirations and sedimented traditions” (p. 84). The chapter resonates with longer standing Freirian traditions and more recent writing on the cultural politics of social movements, while linking them in intriguing ways to reflections on the future-oriented nature of development and culture alike.

If Appadurai reaches out to (certain currents within) development economics, Anita Abraham and Platteau’s chapter reaches back from economics. They tack between economics and anthropology to interpret institutional and socioeconomic dynamics in tribal societies and to explore the ways in which participatory development—when pursued hastily and without prior social and historical analysis—can lead to elite capture, resistance, and the exclusion of the poor. Interestingly, their analysis leads them— like Appadurai—to suggest that rather than intervene directly, development agencies might often be better advised to create space for unions and people’s organizations to lead any process of change, facilitating their networking and (by implication) enhancing their capacity to exercise voice.

TheWorld Bank, of course, has a tendency to assimilate critical languages selectively and then to make them more anodyne and conservative. Yet it would be a mistake to interpret this book this way (although readers will make their own judgments)—indeed, there is an important degree of reflexivity on the part of the bank authors involved. That said, certain themes are notable for their relative absence. I note two here. First, there is no sustained interrogation of “development” as a cultural construct, although one senses that the editors and authors do view it this way. Second, there is no real treatment of the culture of the bank itself.

Perhaps the editors would have been damned if they had and damned if they had not, but was this a lost opportunity to reflect on the intersections between meaning, power, and practice within the bank itself? Only Sabina Alkire’s chapter broaches this issue in any significant way. What, she asks, should an organization like the bank do with the insights afforded by the book’s other chapters—and she then reveals what is it likely to do with them. This leads her to reflect on those cultures of expertise and authority that restrict the extent to which the bank could be a vehicle for opening up debate and fostering “equality of agency” among its own personnel and others (esp., poor people). Although she begins to open the box, it is one that needs prying open further. As the editors note, there is much ethnographic work still to be done on the development organizations themselves.